Atlanta Streets Alive Goes Crosstown

Last Sunday was the first Atlanta Streets Alive event of 2016.  Atlanta Streets Alive is an open streets event sponsored by the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition.  If you've never been to an open streets event, you've missed out on a potentially transformative experience.  Clearing the cars off the road and walking or biking the route changes how you see your city.  The first time I participated in an Atlanta Streets Alive event was in May 2012.  Highland was closed from Virginia Avenue to somewhere in Inman Park -- around Corley Street, as I recall.  It never had occurred to me that I could walk from Morningside to Inman Park, but Iain and I did that day.  Since then, I've been at almost every Streets Alive event there's been, if not every one.  There have been events on Peachtree, and the North Highland route has been extended include a section of Boulevard.  There have been two Streets Alive events in the West End.  For most of them, since that first one, I've been a volunteer, but last Sunday I wasn't working (there had been no email, saying they really needed just a couple more volunteers, if any of us could make it), so Iain and I loaded up our bikes in the van and drove to Grant Park.

It wasn't hard to find the starting point -- Georgia Avenue was barricaded and there were lots of people waiting for start.  There were speeches first, but we couldn't really hear them; we were too far back.

We did see this beautiful black cat on a leash, while we were waiting for the start.  I often ask dog owners if I can take a picture of their dog; this may have been the first cat that I ever photographed in a public place that was accompanied by its owner.

There was music.  This band with dancers was near the start.

This band was in front of the West End Performing Arts Center.  As in previous events, there was a lot of music along Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard in West End. 

Towards the western end of the route, there was bicycle polo.  There not being so many lawyers involved, it did not appear that you had to sign a waiver in order to play.

On the way back, we stopped to see the chalk art; I think this was near Gordon-White Park in the West End. 

We got vegetarian Caribbean food from a food truck in the West End and then got back on the road.

But we didn't go very far before we stopped for dessert at Krispy Kreme, and then we found the MARTA Army table, where I got my new bus schedule to post.  I first joined the MARTA Army at the last Streets Alive event on Boulevard, when they were set up at a table across the street from where I was working in an Atlanta Bicycle Coalition tent.  I asked Simon if I could take his picture, and he insisted that I be in it too, which wasn't really what I had in mind, but there I am.

Then we continued east, and caught up with the famous phoenixes that always lead the bicycle parade. 

Here's Chantelle Rytter, the force of nature behind the Beltline Lantern Parade and the bicycle parades at Streets Alive events.  Earlier, she had stopped at the same food truck we did, with a few other people, and someone asked her about the photo of her that is currently on the Atlanta Streets Alive website.  She laughed and said, out of all the pictures there are of her, they had to use one where she had a mustache on?

The theme for the bicycle parade this time was zoo animals (since the parade was starting so close to the zoo), and there were lots of zebra bikes like this one.

It wasn't the liveliest or most crowded Streets Alive event I've ever been to -- that's always on North Highland, where bars and restaurants set up tables on the sidewalks and spill into the street, and the there are so many people you can't ride a bike through the crowd -- but in some ways it was the best one.  Grant Park I sort of know -- we used to go to the zoo when the kids were younger, I took flute lessons there for a few years, and now we go to restaurants there sometimes -- but the only time I've been to Summerhill was when I worked at the Summerhill fall festival for Living Walls a few years ago.  The route took us through Summerhill and Mechanicsville, right past the soon-to-be abandoned Braves stadium before we got to West End. These are neighborhoods that weren't well-served by either the Braves or the City of Atlanta.  (Let's see if the redevelopment that is being planned for the area will finally make things better for the people who've lived here all this time, as opposed to just making it better for the developers.)  What was special about this route was the demonstration that these neighborhoods in fact could be connected by what should be one of the great east-west cross streets in the City of Atlanta.  Grant Park is a thriving neighborhood, and once that massive dead zone of parking lots is replaced by something that is actually occupied more than 81 days a year, Summerhill and Mechanicsville should be better places to live.  Connecting all these neighborhoods should help all of them. 

Although there seemed to be fewer restaurants and other local establishments participating along some parts of the route, there was a nice neighborhood festival feel pretty much all along the way.  The neighborhood associations were all there, with tables and tents and friendly people there to answer questions.  I know that the Bicycle Coalition made a conscious decision not to do the same loop in West End this time, but to make the case for connectivity.  It was, I think, a great decision.  They have a petition on their website now, asking for support for biking infrastructure investment along Georgia Avenue and Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard.  The time is right to stitch the fabric of our city back together, and I don't know a better way to do it than to make a pretty modest investment in infrastructure that can help make this corridor one of the great streets in our city.

Getting There from Here

I hadn't heard of the MARTA Army until September, when they sat their recruiting station up across Boulevard from where I was working at Atlanta Streets Alive, back in September.  I was working at the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition table in front of Blueprint Church and between the Love to Ride group, that was loaning out bikes, and the new Atlanta bike share project, that had examples of some of the bikes that might be available in Atlanta next year.

Across the street were a couple of guys with a table and a tent and a sign that said MARTA Army.  I was working by myself at the ABC tent for quite a while so it wasn't until mid-afternoon that I was able to walk over and talk to them.  The two guys at the table told me that the MARTA Army was working to improve the rider experience on MARTA and their first project is an adopt-a-bus-stop project.  I didn't know that I wanted necessarily to adopt a bus stop, but I did sign up for their mailing list.

Later, I checked out their website ("Hey there, Metro Atlanta LET'S BUILD A WORLD CLASS TRANSIT SYSTEM")  Here's their vision:

The Atlanta region has been diagnosed with a bad case of urban sprawl and traffic congestion by urban planners and transportation experts. Out city needs better public transportation to become more accessible, equitable, and competitive. The Atlanta region's fragmented governmental institutions still lack the support to build the transit system we need. The initiative for world class transit system must come from citizens. Together, we can show that the Atlanta Region is ready for a world class transit system.

This sounded pretty good to me, so I made a small contribution and showed up for bootcamp at Across the Street in the Old Fourth Ward in mid-October.  I think I was the oldest person there (Georgia Tech graduate students seemed to be the major demographic group), but I signed up to get a schedule for the bus stop nearest me.  I didn't stick around long enough to pick it up -- printing and laminating the signs was taking a long time -- but an Emory graduate student offered to drop it by my house later, and I took her up on that offer.

The bus stop closest to my house, at Wessyngton and North Highland, is a stop at which I'd never actually caught a bus, although I did get off there at least once during that week that I was a MARTA commuter, earlier this fall.  But Hannah dropped the sign off at the house, and later Tom and I put it up.  I didn't do it quite right -- the plastic ties were just a bit too tight -- but now the schedule is posted, and riders who don't have a phone or who don't want to use up their data (an issue I heard at bootcamp) can at least know when the bus is supposed to come.  More importantly, maybe, non-riders will take a look and think, you know, maybe I could take the bus.

When Atlanta Streets Alive came to Peachtree Street in late October, I had expected to be out of town, so I didn't volunteer to work.  Then the trip got cancelled and I thought maybe Tom would join me, so I still didn't volunteer.  But he didn't want to or couldn't (I don't remember the details) and ABC really needed help that day so I ended up saying I'd work and ended up assigned to a tent near the Midtown MARTA station.  I didn't have any idea where I could park -- and I am not brave enough to ride my bike there, even on a Sunday -- so I checked the schedules and One Bus Away and got there and back on the bus, from my very own bus stop.

I'm still a big supporter of bike infrastructure in Atlanta, and think it is part of the picture for what Atlanta needs, but what our city needs more than anything is a real transit system, so there is a real alternative to driving for most of us much of the time.  Younger people are driving less; maybe when they are older they'll move to the suburbs but somehow I don't think so.  Atlanta needs transit, and it needs citizens who will advocate for it and who will use it, now, to get to the places they can get to on it.

Last night we went to the symphony. The surface parking lot where we used to park is closed now so we had to park in the deck on 15th Street.  There's a MARTA station, right there, but no easy way to get there from here.  We paid $10 to park.  That's MARTA fares for two people, round trip.

So when you see a schedule on a bus stopm like this one at Highland and Amsterdam, check it out.  Maybe you can get somewhere you need to go, at least sometimes.  Maybe you too will join the army.  And there are a couple of bus stops on the other side of Highland that still need schedules.

An Early Morning Bike Ride

Sunday morning, it was like an unexpected gift -- a cool morning in late June.  I woke up Tom, early, and told him that I was going to walk the dog,and then go for a bike ride.  He told me to wake him up when I was back from walking the dog and he'd go with me.  When I got back, he was already up, and dressed.

We rode to the Piedmont Park extension on the other side of Monroe, through the park, and on to the Eastside Trail of the Beltline to the end of the pavement on Irwin Street, and then on the way back stopped at Inman Perk for breakfast.  This is a ride we've done on several other recent weekend mornings; this is part of the reason I haven't posted anything in so long, as some of my early morning weekend time has gone to bicycle riding. It's best to get an early start, avoiding both heat and crowds, but the of course the fact that there are so many other people out doing exactly the same thing is part of what makes it so much fun.

On the Beltline, there are people on bikes and roller blades and skate boards.  There are people walking, jogging, and running. There are people with dogs and children.  There's a woman who walks the Beltline, playing the fiddle (we often see her there).  There are young people and older people, there are men and women, there are black people and brown people and white people, with all the diversity in every way that we see in Atlanta's intown neighborhoods.

Memorial Day weekend was the Atlanta Jazz Festival.  Last year Tom and I went for the first time.  Even though it's a free event in Piedmont Park and not very far away and we both enjoy jazz, somehow we'd never been to it.  Last year, we parked on Virginia Avenue and then walked to the park; Tom has bad arthritis in his ankle, and walking is painful for him.  Last year, I told him about the new traffic crossing light on Monroe, and how we could get to the park on bikes.  Of course, last year, neither of us had a bike.

Last fall, I bought a bicycle.  Soon afterwards, Iain got a bike, and he and I did a little riding together.  Then, a couple of months ago I was out of town for work and came back to learn that Tom had bought a bicycle too.  Even though he has arthritis, he can ride a bike without too much discomfort.  So we had planned on going to the festival by bike.  Friday night, there was someone playing that he wanted to hear, and he went by himself; Saturday, we went together, with a picnic, and Sunday, we went back with Pawel and Carolina.  It was a wonderful, glorious display of our city, and we never would have spent so much time there (or maybe even gone at all) if we hadn't ridden our bikes.

There is no doubt that biking -- even as little as we do it -- has made our lives better and made living in Atlanta more enjoyable.  And there is pretty much a direct sequence of cause and effect, from stumbling across Atlanta Streets Alive on North Highland in 2012 to finally buying a bicycle to our new weekend morning routine.  If somehow you've never made it to an Atlanta Streets Alive event, you're in luck -- the next one is September 27, with the same North Highland-Boulevard-North Avenue loop as last time.  Don't miss it.  You never know; it could change how you spend your weekend mornings, and how you see the city.

Atlanta Streets Alive, Back in West End

It was a few weeks ago that the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition brought Atlanta Streets Alive - the Coalition's wonderful Open Streets event - back to the West End.  They had been there last spring for the first time.  That time, after I finished my volunteer shift in the information tent, and was walking around in my Atlanta Streets Alive logo T-shirt with "Volunteer" on the back, several people approached me to ask about the event.  What is this?  Why are the streets closed?  So I told them that it was an event to get all of us to experience our city on foot or on a bike, that it had taken place (thanks to the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition) over the last several years in other neighborhoods, but it was the first time it had come to the West End.  This time, my volunteer assignment was to be a greeter, so I approached people and asked them how they were doing.  Sometimes I asked if they lived in the neighborhood and if they said "yes," I asked if they participated last year.  I think every person I asked said "yes" to that. 

It had rained in the morning but the event was pretty much rain-free.  I suspect that the weather kept some people away who otherwise would have been there, but it didn't keep us away.  This was our first Atlanta Streets Alive on bicycles.  I had to work the first part of the event, so Iain took off on his own.  Early on he ran into Cole from Terminus Legion, and ended up riding with him around the route.  

The greeter business was slow, but I talked to the people I could talk to and got my picture taken many times by the Coalition's photographer, who once removed my backpack so the "Volunteer" would show on the back of my T-shirt.  I haven't seen any of his pictures, but here are some of mine.  Since the last Atlanta Streets Alive event, I bought a bicycle, so this was my first time to do the event on a bike.  As a result, almost all my pictures are from when I was working as a greeter.

Here's the group assembling before the bicycle parade.  I was glad to see the sousaphone players were back, but I didn't get to hear them play.

I told this woman she looked fabulous and asked if I could take her picture.  She graciously agreed.

Here's Chantelle Rytter on one of the famous phoenix bicycles.

And someone else on another one.

And someone on a three-wheeled bike without a phoenix.

This is the only picture I took after I finished my volunteer shift and headed off on my bike.  This area (near the Shrine of the Black Madonna) was very congested so I was walking my bike through the crowd and got to see these women playing drums, up close.

But mostly, once the volunteer shift was over, I rode my bike.  I traded my "thanks for volunteering" coupon for a can of Fat Tire beer and discovered that it's not that easy to ride a bike while drinking a can of anything, so I threw it out after a mile or so.  Somehow I missed the team from Free Poems on Demand who were there somewhere, but I didn't see them.

I was on my second loop around the route when I saw Iain seated at a picnic table having chicken and vegetables with Cole and some other people, including a couple of guys who used to live in the neighborhood.  This was  at the same community organization where we'd gotten food the last time, so I knew it would be good.  So I stopped and after I got my plate they made a place for me at the table and there was great conversation.  We had to leave before the others because Tom was going to pick us up soon.  

So it was another terrific Atlanta Streets Alive.  If it wasn't for this event, I probably would not have bought a bike.  And last week, while I was out of town, Tom bought one too.  So we'll be ready for the next Streets Alive event, which is September 27, on Highlnd.  Don't miss it.

Riding a Bike, Again

My first ride on my first bicycle was not particularly auspicious.  The house we lived in when I was a small child had a steep driveway (at least that's how I remember it).   The first time I got on my new bike, I went rolling down the driveway and my mother screamed as I went sailing across the street, and then I crashed into the curb.  I do not remember being hurt but the tire didn't survive the collision with the curb.

When I was about to go off to college, I told my parents one night at dinner that I thought I needed some wheels to take to school.  They were relieved when they realized I meant a bicycle, and I got a 10 speed Schwinn that I rode all through college.  I didn't ride it every day but the two years I lived off campus I did ride it to class some of the time.  I never had a car when I was in college.

I didn't have a car in medical school, either, and at some point I bought another bicycle which I remember riding to the hospital the month I did a rotation at the Roxbury VA Hospital.  When I lived in Boston, my primary modes of transportation were walking and public transit, but I did ride my bike some.

One summer during medical school I did my obstetrics rotation in Dublin, and after I figured out that they didn't care if we were there or not, started taking three- and four-day weekends.  I made three different trips to three different parts of Ireland.  I rode the train somewhere, and then rented a bike and stayed in bed and breakfast places along the way.  One night I stayed in a bed and breakfast place run by an older lady who was very eager to find things for me to do.  She told me I should visit the beach.  I asked her where it was and she gave me very complicated directions involving lots of turns and climbing over some fences.  I told her I thought I'd have trouble getting there and would probably get lost.  She said she'd have her dog Joey take me there.  She called the dog, and said, "Joey, take her to the beach," and the dog headed to the end of the driveway and turned to the right.  There seemed to be nothing I could do but go with him, and he took me to the beach.  This was a rocky beach and as I recall it was an overcast day; this was not the kind of beach where you sunbathe, but the kind where you wear a sweater and walk around with your hands in your pockets and think about death.  So I was glad to be there with the dog for company, and when I was ready to leave he got me back to the house and I had salmon for dinner.  That was the summer where I learned about topographic maps and if the lines were too close together, it was difficult bicycling.

Later I lived in Durham and used to ride my bike around downtown in the evening, although by then I did have a car.  It was the same when I lived in Nashville and Baltimore -- I didn't ride a lot, but I did ride sometimes.  I knew where to go and what times of day would feel safe for riding.  Then, I moved to Atlanta, and I stopped.  It didn't feel safe, so I just didn't ride.  That was 25 years ago, and I didn't ride a bike again.

Of course in recent years some things have changed.  There's the Beltline, and the new extension of Piedmont Park to Monroe, very close by, and finally the light installed that stops the cars for a safe crossing to the park.  Before each of the last several Streets Alive events, I thought this would be the one that I would finally do on a bicycle, but I didn't.  Last year I looked at bikes at a bike shop a couple of times, but I never rode one.

Last weekend it was beautiful weather, and we wanted to get out of the house on Sunday afternoon.  So Tom dropped Iain and I off at the Beltline on Irwin Street and we walked back, all the way to Ansley and then home from there.  It took a couple of hours.  The Art on the Beltline installations are still up, and they were fun to see, but this is the thing we saw that impressed me the most:

This is at the Elizabeth Street access point to the Beltline.  I'm not sure where all these people came from, but they were probably having a late lunch in one of the restaurants nearby. 

Atlanta Streets Alive was on Highland weekend before last.  We were on our way home and saw there was a new bike shop that had opened up in Virginia Highland, between George's and Moe's and Joe's.  We stopped in and chatted and I looked at a couple of bikes, but I didn't ride any and we headed on home.

Today I'd taken the day off and Tom and Iain are in Florida.  So after I'd walked the dog I headed back there this morning.  I rode a couple of bikes in the parking lot next to Highland Hardware.  I haven't ridden a bicycle in 25 years; I'm glad no one was paying any attention, those first couple of minutes.  I bought a bike, and after lunch, rode from our house to Piedmont Park to 10th Street to the Eastside Trail on the Beltline and then on down to Irwin Street and then back.  I'm not sure what time it was when I left, but I think it took a little over an hour (including walking up the last couple of hills, close to home, on the way back).

Dinner somewhere on the Eastside Trail?  Totally.  I'm in, just let me know when and where.

Atlanta Streets Alive -- North Avenue Edition

Last Sunday was Atlanta Streets Alive, the wonderful open streets event organized by the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition.  This time the route was from the intersection of Virginia Avenue and Highland Avenue south on Highland through Poncey-Highland into the Old Fourth Ward, then north on Boulevard to North Avenue, then past the Ponce City Market and Historic Fourth Ward Park back to Highland, in a lower-case sans serif "d" shape, 4.5 miles in length.

I volunteered for the early shift to help with tactical urbanism projects.  We met on the stretch of North Avenue between the Historic Fourth Ward Park and Ponce City Market.  Our first task was spray painting the slates of some wooden shipping pallets, repurposing them as mobile blackboards.

Next, we constructed protected bike lane in along the Ponce City Market-side of North Avenue, with plastic bollards, plants, and sandwich board signs.  A man with a leaf blower came when we were done and cleared debris from the pavement.

Once that was done, I got a taco from Tex's Tacos food truck.  

The young woman who took my order said it was her boyfriend's truck and this was his third week of operation.  She recommended the chicken taco and I got one of those and one carne asada.  They were both terrific.  (Business must have been ended up being good because when I came by with Iain later, they were out of carne asada.)

I was still on North Avenue when the bike parade came through, with the famous huge flying phoenixes.  I think that's Chantelle Rytter in the lead.  

By then Iain was on his way home from mock trial, so I went home to meet him and then we walked the route on foot.  I took lots of pictures, and if you weren't there, I'll show you a little bit of what you missed.

There were people.  I think this couple was on Highland.

There were lots of children.  Before I took this photo I asked a woman standing nearby if I could take it.  She said "sure," and as I was taking the picture, she hastily added that this little girl wasn't actually with her.

There were friends and neighbors.  We saw Mia at Java Vino.

Even the APD officers seemed to be having a good time.  This was at Highland and Ponce De Leon.

There were dogs.  This one was near Ponce City Market, and the one below was near Blind Willie's.

This faux dog was spotted on Boulevard, on the back of a bicycle.  I think I'd seen the rider-bike-mannequin without the dog head previously at one of the Streets Alive events on Peachtree.

We spotted this pup at Java Vino and Iain and I were both struck by how much he looked like a younger version of Leonard; he has the same longer hair on his ears that Leonard does.  We told his owners that he looked like our dog, a Labrador retriever-Australian shepherd mix.  They were surprised and said their dog was also a Lab-Australian shepherd mix.  And it doesn't show in the photo, but he also has a patch of white on the chest and long white coarse fur at the tip of his tail, just like Leonard has.  So I bet this is what he looked like when he was a puppy.  If he ever needs a picture of himself as a pup for a project at dog school, I'll just use this one.

There was music. There was blues at Blind Willie's.  (There also was jambalaya, which Iain got for lunch before he had the taco.)

There was zumba at several points along the route.  This was near Highland and St. Charles.

There was a marching band.  We saw them later, performing at North Avenue and Freedom Parkway.

There was dance music on Boulevard.

And this trio was performing on North Avenue, near Ponce City Market.

There were plenty of other things to see and do.  There were people playing bicycle polo and a little kids' soccer field on the parking lot on Highland across from American Road House.  Iain and I played a couple rounds of corn hole; neither of us did very well.  On Highland, there was ping pong.

On North Avenue, there were acrobats from the Imperial Opa Circus.

The poets from Free Poems on Demand were set up on Highland.  As we always do, we requested a poem -- this one about the Braves moving to Cobb County -- but we didn't wait for it and were unable to circle back by to pick it up.  I need to follow up with them on that, as this is always one of our favorite Streets Alive activities.

This wonderful collection of portraits (part of this year's Art on the Beltline) was on North Avenue.

There were a couple of large constructions on Boulevard that were created by architecture students at Southern Poly State University.  This is one of them.

 And there were the other tactical urbanism interventions along the route.  The blackboards we had painted were all along the route, and cross walks had been decorated with sidewalk chalk, in a sort of temporary intersection repair-type intervention.

 This one, on Boulevard, was set up as a participatory color-by-number activity.  Iain and I colored in one of the large red squares before we moved on.

And here's the protected bike lane that we'd constructed earlier, when we came back by later.

It was a great event, and I'm so glad we went.  There were a couple of disappointments, though, besides not getting back by the Free Poems on Demand table to pick up our poem.  The commercial areas of Highland were totally packed with people and bikes and activities, but Boulevard seemed underutilized.  Atlanta Medical Center should have had displays and health screening in front of their facility, but once again they were completely missing.  The only sign of life we saw in that stretch of Boulevard was this stethescope-carrying guy in scrubs who was on a cigarette break.  

There also was nothing going on this time at Fort Street United Methodist Church.  One bright spot on Boulevard was a lively scene at Blueprint Church, near the color-by-numbers crosswalk, 

This was the last Streets Alive event of the year; already I'm looking forward to the next one.  And if Atlanta Medical Center needs any ideas about what kinds of activities they should have, the next time Streets Alive is on Boulevard, they should feel free to get in touch with me.  And maybe they could include some information on smoking cessation.

Addendum from October 6, 2014:  I got the poem by email!  Thanks to Zac Denton for writing it and Jimmy Lo for emailing it.  Here it is: